Day 19: S is for Sweaty

My Janathon Sweat Levels are reaching epic proportions. Combining commuting (by bike), going the extra-long way to/from work and cycling hard mean I get home from work with a shirt that makes it look like I've been dipped headfirst into a warm vat of gently steaming wee.




Janathon Stats:

Today:  Bike 17.26km / 52:54 min, Total cals: 484

[Run equivalency calculation: ]

Today: 6.07km / 3.77 miles

Total: 107.0km / 66.49 miles

Day 18: R is for Restless

We have a baby. Did I mention that? It kind of takes over your life. I would be tired enough if I was having a huge amount to do at work. I would be extra tired if you add Janathon on to that. And even further tired with the having to fit in blogging.  But just this past week there's been the extra extra tiredness caused by the Restless Lumpy Badger.  At 6 months old, he's starting to work stuff out and really "think" about things other than "Where's the next bit of boob coming from". (Honestly, it'll be another 13 or 14 years before he gets back to that level of simplicity of thought).

This week, we have moved him out of our bedroom and into his own bedroom. He has used this opportunity to deprive us of sleep by cunningly sleeping while we go to bed, and then waking up at the very moment that we turn the lights of to go to sleep ourselves. (Mrs Badger has become convinced that he is afraid of the dark).  He then refuses to go to sleep for an hour or so, despite rubbing his eyes and getting more and more frustrated that he can't go to sleep because, well, he's too tired to go to sleep.  Then he will drop off. For a few minutes. And then it starts again, except this time he's too hungry to go to sleep. Oh and did he mention too tired as well?


I'm sure this is only a temporary phase, and so I have done some scientific research into it, and come up with the following conclusions:

Today I did an "extra" Janathon bike ride to get a night light and assuage Mrs Badger's fears.

Janathon Stats:

Today:  Bike 13.23km / 41:30 min, Total cals: 390

[Run equivalency calculation: ]

Today: 6.07km / 3.77 miles

Total: 99.84km / 62.04 miles

Day 17: Q is for Quickie, Quiet

Quickie: Just a quick one today. Absolutely manic at work + the child Badger being unsettled in his new bed + janathon means very little time to blog.

I said at the start of Janathon that cycling to work didn't count for me - but now that I'm doing a lot of cycling at the gym I decided that as long as I cycled hard and/or went a longer route that I could count it. Also I said that it wouldn't count because it was exercise that I would have done anyway. Well today I definitely wouldn't have cycled to work because it was PEEEIING with rain. But I did, so that's definitely an extra.  Wierdly my waterproofs worked perfectly except for my super duper gore-tex trousers leaked in such a way as to get just the back of my knees wet. It was a wierd experience.

Quiet: The child badger has been unsettled the past couple of nights, but tonight he seems to have gone to sleep straight away with no complaints and it is wonderfully quiet, so me & Mrs Badger can watch "The Biggest Loser" with a wry grin. And then maybe ... a special cuddle ... ?

Janathon Stats:

Today:  Bike 10.9km / 34:21 min, Total cals: 321

[Run equivalency calculation: ]

Today: 5.29km / 3.28 miles

Total: 93.77km / 58.26 miles

Day 16: P is for Pointless People

This is a bit of a rant. I am known to rant. I have tried to avoid it too much on the blog so far, but I just have to!

I've been doing more gymming this past week (because of my legs) so I've had more time to observe the other denizens of the gym - who I normally refer to as "January Gymmers". Not all of these are Pointless People, but I have three candidates.



Pointless Person 1:
This guy I have seen in the Gym for quite some time (not just this January). However, I have no idea what he actually does because I only ever see him in the changing room. Or just outside the changing room. Or coming in to the changing room.  Maybe "changing" is his idea of exercise. Or maybe his idea of exercise is eating a huge tub of lard because he's certainly way over 20 stone and has been for the past year or so that I've noticed him.  This year of Gym attendance with no noticeable benefit is almost enough to get him the accolade of Pointless Person, but today he tipped the balance. He was hanging around (outside the changing room, natch), wearing those ridiculous "below the bum" jeans. This is a guy who clearly has to go to a "special" clothing store to buy trousers, but goes beyond that to buy even bigger trousers just so that he can hang them off his flabby arse. Pointless!


Pointless Person 2:
I've only seen this girl since the start of this month, but she's been there a few times, mostly at weekends.
She goes on the running machine, but I can't see how fast she has it set on because she drapes her towel over the controls - presumably so she can't see either!  She does about 15 minutes on there and then sometimes does a cross trainer the same way.  The towel is not the pointless offence, however.  The pointless starts with what she's wearing: quite a heavy brown cap, and a zip-up hooded cardigan with the hood up. But it doesn't end there. She spends the entire run holding on to the front of the machine with her hands. This is one of my pet peeves - in fact, if you've got a moment:

What is it with people who go onto an exercise machine and then let the machine do the exercise!. I'm looking at you! person who comes and runs next to me but takes 30 second breaks every 5 minutes by stepping to the sides of the machine and letting it carry on running. I just bet you claim you did all those calories!

- anyway. Pointless-hoodie-cap-girl. If you've got a hat, a cardie and a hood on while you're on the running machine, I don't need to see how fast you are running because YOU AREN'T RUNNING FAST ENOUGH!

Pointless Person 3:
The woman who was on this wierd cross-training- stepping-machine-thing next to me today. It's another one of these new machines they've put in recently.  This one seems to simulate skating or something like that - a bit like a cross trainer but with hand holds that don't move.  This woman wasn't holding onto those, though. She was bent nearly double and holding on to the machine near the controller, with her bum in the air, and she was bouncing up and down on it without making the pedals actually move. WTF is all that about?  If you go on an exercise machine but don't actually make it move, what is the POINT?


There you go. Rant over.  Working week starts tomorrow. I'm quite looking forward to it actually :-)

Janathon Stats:

Today:  Bike 19km / 32 min, Rowing Machine: 2km / 9 min, Total cals: 649

[Run equivalency calculation: ]

Today: 9.05km / 5.62 miles

Total: 88.48km / 54.97 miles


Number of times woken during night by crying son: 3

Day 15: O is for Ouch, Our Room Back and Obesity

Ouch: So I've been in the gym today because i'm still trying to recover my legs from their mystery injury. I have my "calorie equivalency" worked out for converting alternative exercises into running and god it's depressing.  I tried a really strange new machine that they've got which looks like a cross trainer but is a bit wierdly different and is crossed with a step machine or something. It was really really hard work but the number of calories it claimed to be burning was *rubbish* - I was going really hard and only managed 120 in 10 minutes which is waaaaay less than I would manage running, at a significantly higher "perceived effort". So I ditched that for the bike, which has similar problems with lack of calories but at least you get to sit down :-)
After all that effort but without getting enough calories on the chart, I decided to sneakily try a 1 mile jog on the treadmill to see how my legs would feel, and see how many calories that racked up.  Well in 10 minutes i did 140 calories and that was with virtually no effort. I could feel the legs start to hurt again though so I stopped and ran them under a very cold shower for 5 minutes in the hope that I could limit any damage. We'll see about that tomorrow.

Our Room Back (maybe?):  The little baby lumpy badger has been evicted! Tonight after I gave him his 8 o'clock feed, instead of putting him into the bouncy cot by our bed, I put him into the Big Cot in his Own Bedroom! (Mrs Badger put it a bit more harshly). This could usher in a new period of additional sleep, or it could go the other way and make it impossible to sleep at all.  One thing's for sure, though - if he stays in there then Mrs Badger will be getting quite a lot more "Special Cuddles" :-)

Obesity: I got Mrs Badger a Wii Fit Plus for christmas (because she asked for it, I am so romantic!) and for various reasons we didn't get around to plugging it in until today.  It tells me that I ought to lose 1 stone 7lb!!!!!  And it says I have a "Balance Age" 11 years older than me! - mind you I did get to "Professional" level on ski jumping so it's not all wrong.
It even has - and here's where we will be putting it to use - an option to register your pets!  If you've been following, I mentioned in a previous post that we have a cat, called Mog, who is now on a diet.  Below are a few more pics of her (pre-diet). I am going to add her to Janathon using the Wii.

So ... difficult ... to ... get ... up.

Attempting to induce some exercise

Hilarious iPhone-based commentary

Result of informing Mog of our diet plans for her.

Janathon Stats:

Today:  Bike 11.1km / 20 min, Cross Trainer: 10 min, Sneaky Run: 1 mile (1.6km) 10:07, Total cals: 527

[Run equivalency calculation: ]

Today: 7.63km / 4.74 miles

Total: 79.43km / 49.35 miles

Day 14: N is for Norty Negativeness

A paragliding friend of mine has a saying: "Negative Thoughts: Genital Warts".

Then again, this is a person who willingly jumps off of mountains with only a large-ish duvet preventing him from plummeting to his death.  So you can see why negative thoughts would be bad.

I've reached the point in Janathon where it seems to have been going on forever, but it still has forever to go. I think if I can push through this coming week with exercise every day, then I will have cracked it, but oh lordy it is v hard, what with work being über busy, Lumpy the Badger Baby developing teeth and not sleeping, the injury and all, it just seems there aren't hours in the day enough to exercise and blog and also to read and comment on other blogs.

That's where I've been falling down a bit - I feel terribly guilty, I've lurked on a few blogs but I feel I'm lacking the time to really get in there and comment. So that's my 2nd half of Janathon resolution - try to cut out the Negativity and get round a few other blogs and get posting.

Hands up who is looking forward to the weekend!!

Janathon Stats:

Today:  Bike 9.2km / 28 min / 240 cal

[Run equivalency calculation: ]

Today: 2.76km / 1.71miles

Total: 71.81km / 44.61miles

Day 13: M is for Meg & Mog

When Mrs Badger & I set up home together the first thing she started badgering me about was to get two kittens - two so that they could be friends with each other when we were out.  I tapped my sources and found two options: One friend who had a litter of 7 where we could pick two, or another friend who had a litter of four where two were already taken so we had to take the other two.

I chose the "no choice" option because I knew that if Mrs Badger (Who was only Fiancée Badger at the time) went to see a litter of 7 cute little kittens, we would most likely return home with 7 cute little kittens. So we got the two where there was no choice.

In a fit of massive creativity, we named them Meg & Mog - Meg the black one, Mog the Black & White one.

Mog & Meg when they were little

They were 10 weeks old, and they were tiny. They couldn't retract their claws so I went around looking like a self-harmer for 6 months or so until they learned.

Meg was so black that we also nicknamed her "The Shadow" - it's actually really hard to take photos of her she is so black.

Meg, sitting on Mog

What has happened to Mog, though is that over the four years we've had them, Mog has gone from this:

Mog

To this:

Some kind of Whale Beast

So you can see why we need to partake of Janathon!

Legs are OK today (thank you sooo much for the supportive messages) and I stuck to my guns on the training - so I did a very hard 30 minutes on the gym cycle. I'll do the maths later to work out the calorie-based-miles-equivalent and update this post with my full total.

Janathon Stats:

Today:  Bike 16.38km / 30 min / 350 cal

[Run equivalency calculation: 10km on 5th Jan was 871 calories, so 1km = 87.1cal]

Today: 4.02km / 2.5miles

Total: 69.05km / 42.9miles